A FARMER yesterday told how grateful he was to the emergency services after 35 cattle were saved from a fast flowing river.

The cattle ventured onto a sandbank but got cut off by the tidal River Conwy.

As water rose to their necks, the swimming livestock were swept away until a lifeboat helped shepherd them ashore. Three were carried a mile to Dolgarrog.

More than 20 firefighters, coastguards and Conwy RNLI inshore lifeboat crew were sent to the scene near Baclaw Lane, Ty’n y Groes in the Conwy Valley yesterday morning.

Beef farmer Rowland Jones, based at Pendyffryn Farm, Llanfairfechan, said: “I am very grateful to the emergency services. The cattle, which are Limousin and Blonde d’Aquitaine breed yearlings, were in the river for one and a half to two hours. Apparently, they’d also been in there on Monday evening which I hadn’t known about. But yesterday the lifeboat herded them to the shore as if they’d been in a field.”

Beef farmer Wyn Owen, of Llwydfan Farm, Talycafn, got 20 of his Holstein cows on the riverbank to entice the swimming cattle ashore. “It was a neighbourly thing to do. The cattle (from the river) will be on our land till Friday until they get their strength back.”

HM Coastguard watch manager Barry Priddis said: “We had had a call from a lady on Conwy estuary saying cows were in the water on Monday at 7pm. Llandudno coastguard got the cows to go back into their field. Then at 11.40am yesterday the fire service rang us and asked us to deal with cows in the same place as on Monday. The cows had got onto the sandbank, the tide had come in quite quickly and they got cut off. Some were carried up to a mile. We contacted the lifeboat crew which was willing to go out, even though it wasn’t to save human life.”

The coastguard watch manager said there were 27 firefighters. He added: “All the cows have been recovered safely.”

One eyewitness said: “There is no proper embankment or fences along that part of the river, but we very rarely get incidents of animals going in, they might be young stock. It was so sad to see them, still alive, floating along in the river. They were being carried from land at the channel at Ty’n-y-Groes towards Tal-y-Cafn and looked like they were swimming.”

North Wales fire and rescue service said it later used a harness to rescue one of the 35 cows from a ditch.